I don't like

Grinding mobs is not hard. It is mindless and can be easily automated which I think is why some people want grind XP back.

Not necessarily. The only reason grinding was so prevalent was because that’s all people knew how to do. There wasn’t a comprehensive list or guide for quests telling you where to go and what to do and how much experience you earned from it. There’s still unidentified quests in the game (so the rumor goes).

And I’d say about RoF+ is when quests starting rising in popularity. ToV just shot all of the tasks/achievements through the roof.

There should be more ability to "grind" - sometimes people want some xp but have had a hard day at work and don't feel like all of the mental effort / opening up web site descriptions on the side required to do a mission where you have to find 5 things, turn them into the proper npc's in the right order depending on the time of the day while fighting a mob that becomes invulnerable spawning adds that insta kill you if they are not rooted, unless its Tuesday then the rules change....

I like doing the occasional mission, but I've got a hard, complicated job. Sometimes when I get home I just want mindless smack em and take their stuff fun. I like to still feel like I'm getting somewhere doing it, as well.

They completely changed the way AA experience works years ago. I'm not sure that comparison was relevant anymore after they did.

I think it started in House of Thule but they nerfed it.

People who automate gameplay probably aren't that affected by the changes to be honest. It's the casual folk who get hurt the most as usual.

Personally I don't mind either way. Getting max level is such a tiny percentage of total gameplay that it's almost irrelevant how long it takes. I was playing the "right way" (doing everything) and I got to 120 before I even made it to ToV where the whole issue even begins.

I suspect you could max level/aa just doing hunters achievements.
Thats assuming you actually camp the mobs and dont shortcut it with a hunter raid.

Could you explain that? Because as far as I know, the way Celephane explained it, is still the way it works.

It was a long time ago, maybe even over a decade. If AAs were still based on level 51 exp, it would be an insane amount per kill now. I'm 99% sure there was a major change to base it on relative level or something.

Why do you want to drive other folks away?
I hate missions.
I do the ones I have to
I love nothing better than a good 12 hr grind - it's what I do on my days off
The grind isn't anything new - it's what got me into the game in the first place 20 years ago. Except then, there was reward, no, not so much

I don't go round demanding an end to missions, I know some folk like them
Each to his own IMHO

But I don't think EQ can afford to lose all the players who prefer x type of gaming at this stage in its history
So I don't get at all why you would want to stop people having their kind of fun

I don't like that the Dark Shield of Ebon is lore. It should stack to 1000 so you can wear them all on your back for cumulative ac and stick out behind you like a big round tent pole.

My first AA took a LOT of kills of dark blue mobs. More than dozens. Scores. A couple hundred, maybe. Now, a kill in the most recent expac gives 2-3 AA. Doesn't seem that off to me, at all. Need to see some receipts on this one

(Note: this was before the bonus to AA XP when you have very few AAs. This was when AAs first came out - Luclin)

Edit: Frankly, I think the way they've balanced it is not to make AAs take more XP to earn, but rather how many AAs it takes to get the latest ranks of our abilities.

Edit 2: I did find a post from 2013 where it was shown there was a patch ~2006 (TSS) where they rebalanced it to level 70 XP, not 51, and put a couple other limits on it (i.e. if the mob is gray to ANY of the group members, then nobody in the group gets AA XP). Since, from a level 120 perspective, level 70 XP isn't that different from level 51 XP, it's pretty hard to see without getting into several digits of precision.

I miss the trash mob grinding. Not just for exps but for the loots.
It used to drop rare items from certain mobs.

It was very exciting for me to camp a certain mob due to their rare drops.

For instance, toilers (sp) in ME (somewhere), they drop rare range item.
I have solo camped days for them to drop the item I wanted, and I loved the time I have spent there. Spent quite a bit of time there while waiting for friends to show up.

I remember camping the Snow Dervish in Iceclad near the frozen tower to get the ring and the mantle.

I think the greatest attraction on the D&D games for me was the treasure.
Just getting Excited if the current mob will drop the goodies that I was looking for.

I won't bash the grind game's slow xp gains but I am an advocate of replacing missions with something else. What? I'm not sure. I'm just not a fan of the mission platform anymore and find myself less and less interested in doing them.

There have been only four per expansion now for years. As a fan of missions, from my perspective you already have your way on that front.

Dunno if it is the "right way" but since ToV got unlocked some months ago I leveled up 3 toons per account from 110 to 115 just by Overseer and all of them have maxed out merc AAs now. Experience points wise this is way more efficient than automated gameplay or anything else and pure very repetitive grinding without any challenge and fun. 2*10 min each day per account. It is contradictorily that Darkpaw does reduce grinding on one side but does increase it on the other side.

Why do they want us to play the Overseer grind minigame instead of letting us play the main game instead ? My time is very limited and I don't care if I can catch up or not, I won't buy new expansions or AllAccess just because the PCs have reached the level cap. It is obviously that the ideal of the DBG managers is to have all PCs at the level cap as fast as possible to maximize the revenue for the EG7 investors so why not advancing to the next logical step and put an end to the level up idiocy ?! It had been made nearly obsolete by enormous simplification already. Tons of experience boni everywhere only to push the PCs up faster.

Dear Daybreak and Enad Global 7 investors, managers and developers, you could stop with those plump manipulations of the players who are not as dumb as you might like them to be, by setting a final level cap and instead investing your development time to fix your broken game which you had neglected since more than a decade by rushing from expansion to expansion and dismissing and alienating good game developers and other staff. Class balance would be also so much easier with a firm level cap.

Edit:
I completely misunderstood the post I was replying to.

I will say though I think the AAs that completely stop giving any focus to the point old abilities last longer on the order of 10+ minutes, recasts increase several minutes, and the old spells are an order of magnitude better than the new ones until investing hundreds if not thousands of AAs is a problem, in my opinion. Perhaps the new spells/discs should be very little better than the old one without the new AAs, but I think it's a big problem if memorizing new abilities right away results in hugely detrimental effects on the players. That little mini-rant is only because I misunderstood a post I was replying to, but I'll still leave it.

Just think of it this way: If you love grinding so much, this way you get to do more of it.

I hate it when my XP caps, I feel like I'm wasting effort by being in game aside from raids.

Can someone please kindly explain for us clueless TLP classic EQ folks what this Overseer is and why the character advancement model has changed from killling mobs to missions?

What was the design philosophy and justification for this change?

Thank you!

Overseer is a minigame that is accessible on the live servers for lvl 85 and higher PCs. It does reward PC exp, merc exp, an alternative currency for (weapon) ornamentations, tradeskill items, and collectibles (indirectly). Detailed infos at Bonzz's Paladin Page.

Afaik, the design philosophy was never officially communicated. It just got embedded and that was it.

Game Update Notes: March 11, 2020

People complaining about leveling or AA at this time of the year LOL. Maybe try WoW?